An open letter from an exhausted teacher

[TeacherAnonymous123]

Hi all, a new account made for this but a long time lurker and commenter.

I know that the vast majority of parents are supportive of schools and teachers, but after my day today I need to say something.

You are not your child's friend. You are their parent. We have been asked to tell a child to go to bed at a reasonable hour (by their mum) as when she asked, they were 'unpleasant' to her.

I am not paid to parent your child. I am not here to teach them how to tell the time at 13 years old, or tell a 15 year old to go to bed before 4am.

Please teach them boundaries and respect and how to act around people in authority. We are at breaking point and are struggling as it is.

I'll happily hear the other side of the situation, but please - parent your children.

Teacher / administrator here

If restorative is done properly there are consequences, as they are built into the process. But this requires follow up which is often not done due to time constraints. An acronym I use is WARM.

W-what happened (allows both sides to share their story and version of events)
A - who was affected ( allows discussion of implications and all those impacted)
R - repairing (allows discussion of repairing)
M - moving forward (discussions about consequences)

It is the ‘M’ that is the follow up that leads people to believe that restorative has no consequences as this is the time consumer.

And if there is no ‘M’ you have WAR and not WARM.

Disclaimer - I’m much better at using this process at work than with my own kids. 😊

I work in a 'posh' school and I can tell you the problems are the same here. Behaviour is getting worse - it's nothing to do with poverty as a previous poster said. It's parenting and social media. There's also no respect for anyone else anymore, because they don't see it modelled in their parents. If the parents don't respect teachers then how are the kids meant to?
Literacy skills are also declining - we don't read enough in school, the kids don't read enough outside of school, they don't write enough.

OP I salute you.

when I see people on MN prattle on about how they couldn’t possibly upset their little diddums - there was a thread recently where an OP said her DH had taken away story time as a punishment for their 5yo because he’d been misbehaving and had been given warnings, people called her DH abusive and one poster ACTUALLY CRIED at the thought of this - I think “fucking hell the poor teachers who have to deal with the effects of this inept parenting”.

I also posted a rather controversial thread about how people shouldnt have more kids with new partners when their older children have serious issues. A girl in my Y6 DD’s class is bullying her - and is crying out for attention clearly - and both sets of parents have both had babies born recently. there’s oodles of unresolved issues with this girl’s nastiness towards half the class. I was told on that thread to mind my own business that they weren’t hurting anyone. Actually, you are - if you fob off your kid’s problem to have new babies with New Wife it’s the teacher’s problem when that kid acts up.

In fairness in my kid’s primary they don’t teach 5 past and quarter past or eve half past. It’s all “seven fifteen” “twelve thirty” etc. I’d drives me mad and I have tried to teach them but they are rigidly taught another method and don’t quite get it. Bonkers!

Yeah but “your” precious child has to be unleashed to society and move towards being an independent person with responsibility autonomy. They won’t always exist only in “your” world so get a grip

Agree social media, the internet are used as education tools for children. This is fine if they are watching educational stuff and not just wasting endless hours. I have met children with American accents whose parents are not American nor have they spent any time in The US. These are YouTube kids whose parents let them spend god knows how much time watching crap

I mean you all say all this stuff about “parents today”
and then on here you give out at parents genuinely trying to discipline their kids for doing it wrong and “damaging their self esteem” and “shaming” them.

“you can’t give out consequences that aren’t related to the behaviour” bollocks I can’t. And it works, too.

Also. Stop giving your children fucking smartphones and we’ll soon see an improvement.

Just the parents your are aiming your open letter to?

Who parents the kids while both parents work full time ?

Is it better in grammar or private schools OP?

Only parents parent the children and the work pattern is irrelevant.

Other care may be provided by nursery/childminder/relations but they are not parenting.

I have two boys aged 6 and 4.

I have a few set rules and will never rule with fear but I have extremely firm boundaries and they both know there's a line that you do not cross. I am ND and very open about this with them. I will apologise if I've got something wrong or overreacted and thus they know it's okay to apologise too.

We do positive affirmations every day, but we also tell our boys that it's our job to ensure they turn into "fantastic, amazing grown ups!"
We are very transparent about money and will often say "we can't afford X" or "you need to wait until payday, let's take a photo of it." 9/10 they don't want said thing when we get to pay day.

I'm not doing it all perfectly, but I'm trying my best.

When I was a kid, I didn't grasp analogue clocks when they were taught for some reason, so on the teacher's recommendation my parents got me an analogue watch, and after lots of explanation and forever being asked for the time, it eventually sunk in.

Judging by responses above, alternatives to this collaborative effort would have been my parents telling the teacher clocks weren't important, telling the teacher I had a SEN issue, or telling me that I didn't need to know how to do this as it was going to be a digital world, even though they could tell analogue time themselves. All of those responses would have meant I wouldn't have been able to tell the time, and would have subtly undermined the authority of the teacher.

That's why teaching is becoming more and more difficult.

I'm also off to buy an analogue clock for the house in case my children struggle with this.

I have a young friend who is a single Mum, with a job and almost zero practical help from the kids' father. She still manages to bring up well mannered, well rounded children - and even taught them how to tell the time on an analogue clock a couple of years ago!

I agree, I am here to parent my boys, to raise them to be well rounded individuals. That's it. I'm not here to be their friend. Current parenting is too soft for my liking.

I was talking about this recently. It use to be that parenting and teaching was rule fear. "Do this or...,"

Now it's understood that rule by fear had a mh impact on children so everyone is trying to parent differently but it's a lot harder . We have reached a point where children feel they are in charge and we are there to accommodate them.social media/gaming does not help .

Not sure what the solution is. Maybe increased early help, parenting classes.

But with regard to the can't tell the time comment. Yes the parents haven't taught them but they have likely been in education and childcare for 12 years and not learnt it there either! Surely it's part of maths.

What? This so isn't the point here. Dinosaurs are here anymore yet we still learn about them. Analogue clocks are still very much being used and to me the whole thing begs the question.. if you can't be bothered to teach a child something this basic what else are you not teaching them? And it really is basic.

*aren't

I firmly believe child behaviour should be controlled by being a parent and not their friend. My three have been brought up knowing that both myself and DH are the ones in charge. We have always set boundaries for what is acceptable behaviour and worked as a team to bring them up. In a way its a bit like training the family dog if you don't instil the rules right from the start you end up with an uncontrollable situation later down the line. There is plenty of time to be a friend to them once they too are adults and I am proud to say that at every stage from intact to teenage years I could take our children to any event and been confident that they would behave well because they knew what was expected of them.

This is enraging me at the moment!!!

from a staff member: “excuse me sir, could we just talk about where so and so sits”.

“no - I have a limited number of seats and I cannot separate them from everybody.”

“but they can’t sit next to blah blah, or blah blah, or blah blah.”

“then they can sit in another classroom!!!!!”.

thats how I want the conversation to go.

so often ill do a new seating plan and the response will be I’m not sitting there. Uhh…

I'm sorry, what?

So you have stopped parenting (by inference allowed your child to see misbehaving as acceptable) because others are?

The children who get bullied in my school are not all the well-behaved ones. They are the ones where others sense a weakness, an "otherness", and that can take all sorts of forms, from being a bit alternative to having an obvious processing difficulty, to being quite timid. Of course they shouldn't be bullied and I do what is within my power as a mere classroom teacher in that instance to help. Senior leaders in my school are crap, though, so things often don't get followed up the way they should.

The kids who don't get bullied are the assertive ones, and there are some amazing kids among them. The ones who will look others in the eye, calmly tell them they're being stupid and carry on with their day.

It doesn't mean you can just stop parenting in an effort to have your kid fit in better with the bullying crowd. What sort of nonsense is that? It's short-termist thinking like that which creates so many problems down the line.

Well done for calling it out OP. Yes you have my heartfelt support & respect. I don't know how you cope with 30 of them every day.

I have a 15 yo ds, in prime 'grunt mode'. I tell him to go to bed, to wash, to revise, to eat sensibly. I'm regularly sworn at in frustration, moaned at for being 'mean', told he hates me 😄 Ho hum ! All just part of parenting. It'll pass.

He is actually a kind and thoughtful boy, and he'll be fine. He's on track for decent grades due to the efforts of someone like you.

So thank you.

Blaming teachers for not reading analogue clocks is like blaming driving instructors for people not indicating after they passed their driving test. The teachers play their part in the teaching, but you have to maintain the learning and turn it into a habit by using it in the real world. Both my DCs are ND and took their time to learn how to read clocks, and it had to be supported by practice at home. (Yes, with some ND children it just won't click)

Supporting school is important. Even over something like SATS which I am deeply critical over (mainly from dealing with the aftermath in secondary), I present it to the DCs as the outcome isn't important to you, but you have to learn the content. You will be expected to know x, y, z by secondary school and that is important.

The one time I've been called over at the end of the day to discuss my child's behaviour (attention related, not intended naughtiness) the teacher visibly relaxed when I reinforced them rather than getting annoyed with the staff. They clearly expected me to get agitated with them.

I don't have angel children and get a lot of emotional release after school, but because they've been brought up with boundaries and consequences they tend to function very well in school and value the purpose of education as a springboard into interesting careers, and my agenda and their schools' agenda have very strong overlaps and want the same in the big picture even if we sometimes have to suck up some details along the way.

I've taught, I still work with young people and the hardest ones are those who aren't raised with consequences to their actions. What parents can get away with indulging at home does not upscale to being in groupings of 20-35 peers. I've felt far more relief at parents having a tantrum and stropping off, withdrawing the children than I have about children leaving. It tends to be a shame for the child, but not dealing with the parents' criticism and complaints any more makes life easier.

I was at the GP surgery recently and some youngish children were playing around the self use blood pressure machine and weigh machine. I wanted to use the blood pressure machine and asked them to let me get by to use it. Their mother was on her phone. They shouted at their mother to make the 'old lady' go away. Their mother ignored them and me.
When I saw the nurse I explained that I hadn't been able to use the machine so she took my blood pressure. She told me that it was so difficult to get parents to take responsibility for their children. So many were scrolling their phones but became angry and abusive when staff intervened to ask children not to play with medical equipment.
I am just listening to Justine Roberts, CEO of MN, on Radio 4, supporting a complete ban on mobile phones for under 16s. Perhaps a ban on phones in specific public places might also be useful such as GP surgeries, libraries, play sessions to encourage parents to be more involved with their young children.

I'd support a ban on smart phones for under-16s. Let them have a brick phone, by all means, but take the device away which is giving them free access to what has been proven to be addictive material. I have kids playing gambling games in class ffs!

I accidentally posted the below in a different thread, but it belongs here:

I forgot another thing that's dying out: board games.

I have an increasing number of children in Y7 still unable to read the eyes on a dice. Children who don't know what Ludo is, have never played Monopoly, don't know basic card games like UNO or dice games like Yahtzee, let alone rules of movement in chess or checkers.

Now that's really concerning, because it tells me just how little they get played with at home.

Edited to add: I am a single parent. I work full-time and do all of the life admin for all of us, too. We're all exhausted. My kids still get played with and taken to the library regularly. Lack of time and tiredness doesn't get much sympathy from me; most parents are tired and time-poor and still a number of us manage to parent our kids